Archive for November 30, 2011

My mom dug out some of my old books from when I was a kid, and I got my old copy of Maxx Trax: Avalanche Rescue back. I remember loving this book when I was a kid, I was really into the artwork. I remember seeing another book in the Maxx Trax series at some point, but can’t remember what it was called. How many books were in this series? The art is really great, very eighties in its sensibility. I was reading through the book and got the impression that the trucks were left behind after an armageddon, since there were no humans, and the trucks had to cross over a pile of abandoned cars, and the snow seemed to indicate a nuclear winter. I was just curious about your take and inspirations for these books, I am an artist myself now, and appreciate the vehicle designs, and interested in the origins of one of my favorite books when I was a kid.

Thanks!

Eli

I replied:

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Eli! Thanks so much for that letter. Maxx Trax: Avalanche Rescue was my first published book, back in 1986 when I was a mere pup, 25 years old — and that was the little book that launched this Incredible (Unstoppable! Unflappable!) Publishing Empire.

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Thank you, thank you very much (in Elvis voice).

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Actually, I have great fondness for that book. It’s been out-of-print for nearly two decades, but when it was first offered on Scholastic Book Clubs, they put it on the front cover of SeeSaw Book Club and it sold through the roof, eventually moving more than 1,000,000 copies. Crazy, I know. But because it was my first book, and worked in-house as a junior copywriter, I was paid a flat fee, no royalties, so I earned $2,500 on the deal. But I’m not bitter!

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The book began with a Star Wars-inspired introduction, epic and overblown.

It’s a little embarrassing, but also, I think, the tone we were going for.

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Even worse, when it came time for the sequel, Scholastic inexplicably fired the original illustrator, Joe Lapinski, who did such a pitch-perfect job on the original. He nailed it. But I suspect that Joe wanted more money for the next book, and corporate had other ideas.

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The illustrations for the follow-up book, Maxx Trax: Monster Truck Adventure, featured a new, experimental technique: computer graphics, and it did not turn out very well. I remember when my editor told me about it. I was like, “Why didn’t you just rehire Lapinski? He was great.” Oh well. The technology was too new, too primitive. Think early Pac Man but in picture book form. I looked at that second book and my heart sank. I knew that no kid would go for it. And that was the end of the series. (Buy, hey, on the bright side: corporate saved money on the illustrator!)

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Yeah, sure, a nuclear winter makes sense to me. I’m not sure if I understood the backstory in those words, exactly. Perhaps I didn’t even think about it that deeply. I just kind of accepted the circumstances as fact and told the story from there — a world seemingly without people, with trucks that communicate and perform . . . all sorts of . . . amazing . . . truck-ish type feats. With lasers!

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Here’s the killer. When I visit schools, which I do fairly often, I’ll sometimes pull that book out. Students always ask about my first book. And every time, the boys see it and freak out. They want to buy it right there, right now. And I have to say, “Sorry, I’ve got two copies to my name, that’s it. The book is out of print. You can’t buy it anymore.” If I’ve learned anything about the children’s book business in the past 25 years, it’s that I know Maxx Trax would sell today. It’s so cool, so much fun, so right for boy readers. Trucks and adventure.

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Quick, get Lapinski on the phone! Come on, Scholastic. Wake up, already. I’ve already got the title of the next — Maxx Trax: Tsunami Rescue!

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The Dawn of Maxx Trax must rise again . . .

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Seriously, Eli, thanks for writing. In every author’s heart there’s a special place for his first book. It was awfully kind of you to take the time to write to me. You’re a good soul. Good luck with your own artistic efforts — keep on believing in yourself, keep on feeding that brain of yours, and work hard. Send me a JPEG or something. I’d love to see what you’re up to.

In the article, various musicians discuss their favorite instruments. I particularly liked Peter Buck’s description of his beloved guitar, because it so closely matched what I’d already written in my upcoming Young Adult debut, Before You Go (July, 2012).

Before we get to Buck and his guitar, here’s a brief section from my book, written over a year ago. To set the scene: Jude and Becka are hanging out together for the first time after work; they’ve walked the Jones Beach boardwalk on a cloudy day and are now playing putt-putt golf. Becka tells Jude that she’s saving up for her dream guitar:

“Tell me,” Jude said, tapping the ball into the hole. He didn’t bother to fill in the scorecard. Jude hated those ultracompetitive guys who took things like P.E. way too seriously. He and Becka randomly cut over from the third to the eleventh hole. Nobody was around, nobody cared, and this one has a fake pirate ship in the middle of it to enhance the awesomeness.

“You know what I mean,” Becka protested, a hint of color rising to her cheeks. “I’ve been staring at that guitar for the past year. It’s my goal for this summer. I need that guitar.”

Jude knew exactly how she felt. He was always coveting a new guitar, or considering a trade-in. Every guitar had an individual sound, a character of its own, something that most people didn’t understand. Jude and Becka talked guitars and music, compared iPods and favorite tunes, thrilled to have that connection. “I’d love to hear you play,” Jude said.

I know, nothing fancy going on here, just two characters finding common ground, the beginning of something more. But I do love the setting, Jones Beach. I spent so much time there as a kid — hanging out and, later, working at the concession stands and washing dishes in the restaurant.

Now, from the article, here’s Peter Buck, name-checked in the section above (as is Johnny Marr, who coincidentally wrote the foreward to Graham’s book), describing his beloved Rickenbacker 360 JetGlo:

Buck & his guitar, 1983.

I bought my first Rickenbacker in about 1980. I love the tone. I love the history, knowing that Roger McGuinn and George Harrison and Pete Townshend also played Rickenbackers.

That one got stolen eventually, I think in 1981, when I was doing a show for $100. So we went to a tiny little guitar shop and pulled a Rickenbacker out of a box. It was in tune. I played it, it sounded great, and it’s the one I’ve used on every single record I’ve ever made. I’ve played it on stage my entire adult life and on every REM record except the “Radio Free Europe” single, because I didn’t have it at that point.

NOTE: I just triple-checked my Lennon/Rickenbacker reference. I know I got it from somewhere, that he played a Rickenbacker, but with Buck’s mention of Harrison, I started to wonder. Here’s a good article for guitar geeks, “The Beatles and Their Rickenbackers,” by Bjorn Eriksson.

Through the miracle of Facebook, I’ve enjoyed the great pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with an old friend of my sister’s, Bruce Donnola. No, my sister’s name is not “Bruce Donnola,” but I’m too tired to get myself out of that messy sentence construction. “Bruce Donnola” is actually the name of . . . nevermind. Growing up, Bruce was once very much my long-haired elder, but I’ve closed the gap over the years. He recently sent to me a brief essay that was intended for my defunct but most awesome blog, FATHERSREAD.com, which, alas, died on the vine. The blog didn’t get the response I’d hoped for, but more importantly I learned that I just didn’t have the time to give it the energy necessary to succeed. Disappointing, but lessons learned. I still care deeply about the gender gap in reading, about boys and reading.

Here’s the father’s story that Bruce sent. I scanned it quickly upon first reading, the way hurried people read emails, and thought it was good. Then I reread it, taking my time, and just now reread it again with deepening appreciation. I gradually recognized how many deep, important truths about boys and reading were contained in this subtle narrative. The comic books, the reading for information, the parental disappointment (and, at times, disaprroval), and the boy himself — an alert, active mind picking his way curiously through the pages and statistics and cereal boxes.

My wife worries that our eleven-year-old son doesn’t read. This has been going on for a few years now. It started in second grade when we bought him easy readers like Danny and the Dinosaur. We read that to him many times, imagining that he would eventually enjoy finding a quiet time to sit and reread it on his own, just like us grownups. But Cisco never had the slightest interest. He enjoyed having us read to him (thankfully, he still does). But he would not read books from cover to cover on his own. “He won’t even read Danny and the Dinosaur,” my wife despaired.

That disinclination has remained unchanged over the last three-plus years. But my response to my wife has always been the same: Cisco does read — he just doesn’t read books from start to finish, unless they’re assigned in school. He pulls out books on things he’s interested in — Star Wars, Leggos, dogs. What he does on an almost daily basis is open a book, flip through the pages looking at photos, stop when something grabs him, read a caption, maybe a paragraph or two, then move on. He does this with books, with comic books, with toy catalogs and most recently with newspapers.

My son is totally hyperactive, with little patience or desire to sit still. The way my son reads is part of the way he is. But the truth is that I was not hyperactive as a kid, yet my reading habits were much the same as his. Despite growing up in a highly literate household where everyone read constantly, much of it heavy literature (my mom’s favorite author was William Faulkner, my oldest brother loved James Joyce), the truth is that I barely read any books from start to finish unless they were assigned in school. Just like my son.

Yet I read constantly.

I read comic books the way some people eat potato chips. I couldn’t get enough of them, bought every new issue of (mostly) DC Comics every month and reread old issues dozens of times. I had a huge collection of Classics Illustrated and, despite the derision often accorded them, developed a love for the great stories of western literature that remains to this day.

I also read other frivolous things as a kid. I had a subscription to Mad Magazine, with contents that ranged from silly to brilliant. I LOVEDFamous Monsters of Filmland magazine, a periodical that mostly focused on old horror films from the 1930s and 40s, with a strong appreciation of earlier silent films. It was also filled with truly horrendous puns which any boy would appreciate (it came from Horrorwood, Karloffornia). This wonderful and ridiculous magazine led me into a lifelong love of cinema history.

I also read Peanuts voraciously — in fact, I probably learned the word “voraciously” by reading Peanuts. I remember often going to my parents holding a Peanuts paperback, asking what certain words meant, trying to understand jokes about Beethoven, psychiatry, or World War I fighter pilots. The intelligence, wit, and incredible comic timing of Peanuts in the 1960s are still a marvel to me. How many words are in any given four-panel Peanuts strip? Yet how much depth is contained in those words?

I also found joy reading ephemeral things like toy catalogs. I literally spent hours poring through the legendary Johnson Smith catalogs, with their X-ray specs, trick black soap and plastic vomit. Each item that was for sale was described in probably one or two sentences. But I savored each one of those brief descriptions over and over, as if they were a perfect haiku. All the possibilities of the mysterious world ahead seemed to lay in that booklet of magic tricks and practical jokes.

I could go on but the point is simple: what a boy reads is not the issue. The number of words he reads is not the issue. The issue, assuming there is no reading disability and assuming he is in a home where the parents read, is: does he have access to the books, magazines, comics, catalogs, baseball cards — whatever — that are about things he loves?

I didn’t really start reading books from beginning to end until I was a teenager, and truly it was not until I was eighteen or so that I really fell in love with literature. But the foundation had been laid in my childhood: in a house of book lovers, with good and great books shelved and piles up in every room, my parents quietly encouraged me to read by providing every silly book, comic, magazine or useless piece of printed ephemera, no matter how few words or how unchallenging, that I craved. The result was I had fun reading. The result was I have always loved to read.

So now in my son’s room you will find, once you recover from seeing the astonishing mess, two bookcases packed with books that range from early readers to teenage titles; a few stacks of old comic books, mostly from my childhood era (unlike today’s comics, they were actually meant for kids); Leggos magazines, which are mailed to us free every other month; a couple of DK Eyewitness books on Star Wars that look like they’ve survived the Clone Wars; two books on dogs recently taken out of the school library (hint-hint); a horrible new teen music magazine (he’s got the hots for Victoria Justice), and at his bedside a copy of Danny and the Dinosaur. One night recently he pulled it out on his own and decided to read it before bed. And there it remains, reread many times since. At his age, eleven years old, it presents no challenge to his intelligence and no challenge to his reading abilities. He simply likes to read it because it makes him happy.

I’ve lost track of the original source for this photograph, so my apologies in advance. I seem to recall the photo was taken of a random student in a coffee shop somewhere, passed along by ABC: Anti-Bullying Coalition, which I subscribe to on Facebook (recommended).